The question isn’t should you go green and look to be sustainable — it is when and how. The road to going green and becoming sustainable takes action, knowledge, and planning. While there is a lot that you can get from reading blogs and websites, some of the best information and actionable tips are from courses from companies, like Colbea.
By Team Savant
Image: Nick Fewings
Goals
Your goals will be how you decide if your efforts have been successful or not. When you have goals in place, you can track how much you can do, how much you have done — and highlight places where you can make a bigger impact.
Set simple goals like changing all of your lightbulbs and making sure that you are separating the rubbish into easy-to-recycle boxes.
Recycling
Starting to recycle is one of the easiest ways that you can start to make an impact almost immediately. However, you can double down on it by only buying recycled furniture, refurbed devices, and more.
Wherever possible, asked — does it need to be new, and how can we recycle this?
Waste
Some types of businesses tend to have more waste than others, but if you seem to have excessive waste, then you should address it. Look at your daily or weekly waste output and how you can reduce it or find ways to recycle it.
Take stock of every type of waste that you produce and how you can reduce it.
Sustainable Packaging
If you ship products — what do you use to ship them? Are you using sustainable and recycled cardboard and plastic? Do you have excessive packaging that could be reduced? The thing about cornstarch packing peanuts, recycled cardboard, and plastic, and if the product needs as much packaging as you are using.
Local Suppliers
You can have an impact on how your carbon footprint looks simply by changing your suppliers and manufacturing partners to being local. Local goods aren’t just the best idea in terms of fuel costs and pollution. Buying and sourcing local things means you are contributing to the local economy — and that is a great thing.
Charity
Even after making countless changes to your business, you might find that you don’t feel like you are doing enough. So what else could you do? You can partner with a charity and give a donation each month — or you can work on other initiatives.
There are programs that offer tree planting, water clean-ups, and putting devices and technology into low-income areas.
Think about what is more important to you and how you can make an even bigger difference. It is possible to work with a few charities and programs; just make sure that you aren’t stretched too thin — and you don’t agree to more than you can manage.
Review And Improve
Once you have everything set up, you need to make sure that you are meeting your goals — setting new ones and moving forward. Look at what is working and what isn’t, and keep your process morning forward.
It’s not just your business that can be sustainable — you can be sustainable in everyday life, too: What Is Sustainable Fashion And Why Is Everyone So Obsessed With It?